Robert Garcia

Executive Producer of Newscasts, NPR

Robert Garcia is the Executive Producer of Newscasts, the broadcast unit that provides the most listened-to content in public radio with 24 million listeners each week. In this role, Garcia oversees the production and broadcast of 44 newscasts Mondays through Fridays, and 24 each day on Saturdays and Sundays. Since joining NPR in February 2010, Garcia has led the Newscast unit's adoption of self-engineered broadcasts, in which news anchors run their own board—a significant change for public radio broadcasting. He planted the Newscast flag on NPR's West Coast bureau in Culver City, California, by hiring NPR's first newscaster to regularly broadcast from NPR West. Garcia also promoted Korva Coleman and Lakshmi Singh to full-time anchor positions, each of whom are among the most recognized and respected journalists at NPR. Garcia was already a news and media veteran when he arrived at NPR, bringing with him decades of experience in leadership roles at some of the nation's largest media organizations. Just before coming to NPR, Garcia was the Executive Director for News and Sports at ABC News Radio from 2007 to 2009, where he was responsible for all day-to-day news content and special events coverage for what was then America's largest radio network with over 2,300 affiliates. As head of CNN Radio in 2000, Garcia won Edward R. Murrow awards in the network radio categories of Overall Excellence, Best Newscast, Investigative Reporting, and Best Feature Reporting. In December 2015, Garcia was nominated by the Radio Television Digital News Foundation as the recipient of the foundation's prestigious 1st Amendment Service Award. Garcia never graduated from college and considers this a badge of honor.